Shaken A low, ominous rumbling tore Alan Virdon from thoughts of past and present. He looked up sharply at the midnight landscape as the ground began moving, deep-seated plates shifting and buckling, tensions realigning themselves along the planet crust beneath what had once been Northern California. Without thought he put his hand on Pete Burke's hip, as if he could somehow keep his fellow astronaut safe or protected. Burke, who had been sleeping fitfully for the previous few hours, jerked awake as the earthquake intensified.
"Alan?" he squeaked, and reached out in the darkness. Mindful of the gorillas in the region, they hadn't dared build a fire. The half moon lent an eerie silver glow to the field where they'd stopped for the night, enough illumination for Virdon to see the fear sketched on Burke's face. Fear he easily imagined reflected on his own.
"Right here," Virdon said, grasping the flailing hand and holding it tight. "Hold on."
Tree branches dipped, stones rattled loosely, and the growing rumble shook the fillings in Virdon's teeth. He fought the natural instinct to run from danger. Out here, in the middle of valleys and hills, farms and fields, no place was necessarily safe. Driven no doubt by the same urge, Burke kicked away his blanket and tried to stand.
"Let me go," he snapped, pulling at his hand.
"No, it's okay," Virdon said. "I think it's almost over."
"Let go," Burke insisted, and yanked free. But he didn't bolt into the night. Instead he stood half-crouched, arms spread for balance, looking somewhat like a surfer riding a big wave. In any other circumstance, it might have been funny. Not today. That morning, while the two astronauts and their friend Galen explored ruined San Francisco, Burke had been captured by the gorilla general Urko. Burke and Urko had fallen into an old subway station and been entombed for six hours, slowly asphyxiating while Virdon tried to engineer their rescue. After being freed, Urko had tried to have Burke and Virdon shot. No, not a good day at all, and the ordeal had robbed both humans of their senses of humor.
The ground settled abruptly, the seismic forces subsiding. The rumbling faded and left only the rustling of leaves behind. Virdon's stomach unknotted. He hoped that Galen, who had volunteered to go up the valley and make sure Urko was on his way back to Central City, had escaped the aftershock unharmed. Burke sat down hard beside him and sucked in a deep breath.
"I never did like California," the younger astronaut said.
"You okay?" Virdon asked.
"Yeah," Burke answered, but he quickly took in another large breath, and then another. His shoulders shook. He hadn't suffered any serious injuries from his ordeal, mostly cuts and bruises and a splitting headache, but Virdon knew that sometimes the worst damage was invisible to the naked eye.
"You're sure?"
"I'm fine, " Burke insisted, annoyed. "Stop staring at me."
"I'm not staring," Virdon lied.
More strained breaths. Burke lay back on the ground, both hands on his chest, his knees up. He scrunched his eyes closed and said, dismayed, "Oh, Al, I can't breathe."
Virdon instantly bent over him. Fast pulse, sweaty skin, hyperventilation. Classic symptoms of an anxiety attack. "You're breathing fine. Just a little fast."
Burke shook his head as his chest heaved. "No, something's wrong - heart attack - "
"You're not having a heart attack," Virdon said firmly. Burke was young, in excellent shape, and had no history of cardiovascular problems. As mission commander for their doomed voyage, Virdon had studied both Burke's and Jonesy's medical backgrounds. All three of them had undergone first aid training as well. For poor dead Jonesy, first aid would never matter again.
"Yes, I am," Burke gasped. "What more - can go wrong - today?"
"If you were having a heart attack, you wouldn't be able to talk," Virdon pointed out as he scanned their small campsite. The younger astronaut was exhaling too much carbon dioxide, which in turn aggravated the symptoms of breathlessness. He needed a simple paper bag, but no paper bags had been made on earth in at least a thousand years. Virdon picked up one of the their leather canteens, but he didn't think it suitable for the job and they couldn't afford to lose the water inside.
He'd just have to talk Burke out of it. Virdon put his hand on Burke's shoulder and held it there. "You're hyperventilating, Pete. When I tell you to, take a regular breath and hold it while I count to five. Then breathe in and out of your nose. Got it?"
Burke's left fist hit Virdon's chest weakly. "No. I can't - breathe - "
His distress was real, even if the crisis wasn't. "Give it a try," Virdon urged. "I promise it'll make you feel better. When I count to three, hold your breath. One . . . two . . . three."
After several minutes of coaxing and effort, Burke finally relaxed enough to look abashed. "I'm sorry," he said roughly, when the worst was over. "That was stupid."
Virdon shook his head. "Nothing stupid about it. You've had one hell of a day. Thirsty?"
Burke nodded, but he wouldn't meet Virdon's gaze directly. He propped himself up on one elbow. The older astronaut handed him a canteen and then sat back. The clear summer skies showed nothing but moon and stars, and the mild temperatures would make sleeping easy. Assuming the ground didn't keep shaking.
"Do you think that was another quake, or just an aftershock?" Burke asked, his voice low and strained.
"Aftershock," Virdon guessed. "But the ground's not going to open up here, Pete. No subway tunnels underneath us."
"As far as you know." Burke put the canteen aside and laid back with the blanket pulled up to his chin.
"Cold?"
Burke shook his head, but didn't release the blanket. "Sorry for losing it."
"No more apologizing," Virdon said. "I think you had more than reasonable cause."
Burke's gaze flickered to him for a moment. "Is that what you're going to put in your report?"
Virdon raised his eyebrows, amused by the question. "My report? You think I stay up at night and write reports?"
"This from the man who finished the qual standards for the Folgen booster three weeks before the rest of our class? The man who spent every weekend writing sim evaluations and a new draft of the procedures manual?" The tension in Burke's voice eased a little into his old, familiar sarcasm. "Come on, Al, you're a glutton for paperwork."
Virdon broke a twig between his hands. "Not anymore."
Burke grunted softly and curled up on his side. Sleeping on the ground couldn't be helping those cuts and bruises, Virdon thought sympathetically. In the morning, Burke was going to hurt all over. They had some tree bark tea in Virdon's pouch, a homeopathic remedy picked up from a so-called 'healer' a few villages back, but it couldn't match the power of good old-fashioned aspirin.
Virdon asked, "How's your headache?"
Burke's shoulder hitched up. "Fine."
"We have some tree bark - "
"Good night, Alan," Burke said firmly.
In the two months since they'd been stranded, Virdon had grown familiar with that tone of voice. Burke might be sulking, or maybe just tired, but he was definitely not in the mood to talk. The younger astronaut could be amazingly stubborn sometimes, refusing to admit weakness or pain or confusion. Those stoic traits were highly prized by the military, but Virdon had come to believe them overrated. He himself was more emotive, preferring to talk about troubles and worries before they festered into fear and bitterness.
"Good night, Pete," Virdon answered, surrendering for the moment.
He scattered the pieces of twig into the dirt and sat back against the nearest oak tree. Had Burke only been joking, or did he seriously think Virdon would someday notify their superiors of the younger man's panic attack? Although not automatic grounds for disqualification, such an incident could be detrimental to an astronaut's flying status. The last thing the space program needed were pilots and navigators hyperventilating under the enormous strain of space flight.
The point was, of course, momentarily moot. The future they lived in had no space programs, no flight doctors, no detrimental fitness reports. Then again, if Burke was genuinely worried, maybe he secretly shared Virdon's conviction they would find a way home despite his usual disbelief.
Virdon fingered the precious recorder disk. His single-minded determination had driven the fugitives to the outskirts of San Francisco despite the morning's tremors. Burke hadn't been keen on the idea, but Virdon overruled him. The two humans and one chimpanzee had formed a quasi-democracy when it came to making decisions, but Colonel Virdon still outranked Major Burke, and they both knew it. Burke had been the unfortunate one, had come the closest to perishing, but any of them could have been killed.
For not the first time, Virdon wondered if going home was worth such a sacrifice. The thought of Burke buried alive or killed by a gorilla's bullet made his stomach twist into new knots.
"You know what I would put in my report?" Virdon asked suddenly.
For a moment, he thought Burke had fallen asleep, or was at least pretending to be asleep. But the other astronaut finally replied, in a small voice, "No, Alan. What?"
"I would put that you acted with courage and honor."
Silence for a few seconds. The blanket shifted as Burke lifted his head to peer at Virdon. "Courage and honor, huh?"
"You did good. You kept your wits about you, you remembered your Morse Code, you didn't kill Urko and you didn't let him kill you."
He'd meant the last part as a joke, but Burke murmured something that made him rethink his choice of words. "What did you say, Pete?"
"He tried to," Burke repeated softly. "At the end. Tried to kill me."
A chill worked its way down Virdon's spine. Immediately after the rescue, Burke had described his time trapped in the subway calmly and succinctly. He'd left out anything about attempted murder.
Burke rolled onto his back. "Right after you threw down the rope. He was pretty pissed off about a zoo poster that was hanging down there, and I don't know - maybe the lack of oxygen was freaking him out, too. He came at me with a knife."
"So you got out of the way."
"Yeah. I got out of the way. My coach always said I had good reflexes." Burke fell silent, and for a moment, the only sound in the field was the endless chirping of insects. Virdon tried not to think about how much damage a properly wielded knife could inflict on a human body.
In a lighter voice Burke asked, "So, what do you think? Worth a purple heart?"
Virdon rubbed his neck. "How about a meritorious service medal? We'll save the purple heart for a really bad day."
Burke sighed. "I can live with that. As long as they give us all our back pay. Two thousand years of missed salary is a lot of money, you know? Let's not even talk about compound interest."
The wisecracking sounded so much like the usual Peter Burke that Virdon was sorely tempted to think the ordeal was a closed matter. But there could be thousands of destroyed cities across the landscape of the ape world, and any one of them might contain a clue that would lead them home. Could they afford to brave the dangers of each one? Could they afford not to?
Burke said, "Good night, Alan."
Virdon's throat tightened. "Good night, Pete."
In silence, they both turned their faces toward the stars.
The End
Author's Notes: Thank you to Dawn Cunningham for her beta-reading and asssistance! Any remaining mistakes are obviously my own. "Planet of the Apes" was my very first fandom. It aired for a very brief time in 1974. James Naughton, who played Peter Burke, still acts in movies and is an award-winning Broadway singer who recently performed at the White House. Ron Harper ("Garrison's Gorillas" and Uncle Jack in "Land of the Lost") played Alan Virdon, and the late Roddy McDowall played Galen.If you liked it, hated it, read it, used it to line a birdcage, made origami with it or want to see more POTA fanfic, how about dropping me a line? Thanks!